Perfectly Imperfect

When you have a difference, adapting to situations is a skill that you learn from a very young age. So when things happen now, and there might be a bit of panic, I’m able to think outside the box a lot more easily than other people because I have learned there is always more than one way of doing something.

I do things for me, and I am comfortable in my own individuality.

Growing up, as far as I could see there was nobody in the world who looked like me. Nobody I knew, no celebrity, nobody in the media, nobody with a body like mine who I could look up to

How I learned to love myself, to celebrate my difference.

It all came together for me in those moments. But years of work, in the pool, and personally, in all aspects of my life, had gone into being able to meet this challenge with such conviction and self-belief. It’s everything that made up that path over those years that I want to share with you here. All the things I did to get myself to that moment before diving into the water, when I was full of self-belief, self-love, trust in myself and my abilities. How I set goals, big and small

In sport they always say, ‘Control the controllables.’ In these pages, I have tried to capture the story of my controllables, the things I did, and still do, to get me where I am today: comfortable in myself. Embracing my difference, seeing my arm as my superpower. To track the ways I’ve managed various aspects of my life, in the hope that they might help you to feel how I feel today. Happy, strong, not afraid, not alone, finding the power in my difference, embracing who I am.

Perfectly Imperfect.

Love,

Ellen

at this point in my life it’s as if I’ve come full circle, and I’m back to where I was when I was a kid; I am swimming because I love it. And as an adult, I feel like I am really learning how to love myself more. I do things for me, and I am comfortable in my own individual

The chapter I’m in now, I finally feel like I have all the tools. I’m going to retire from swimming this year, after my last Games in Paris, and I’m already looking forward to what comes next. Where before, a lot of my decisions were made for other people, or influenced by other people,

These were all things that I kept in. I couldn’t tell anyone because I felt like no one would understand

And I knew I felt as if I couldn’t be loved, that I was unworthy.